When doctors won't tell . . .
Of all the online nutritional information, nutritional facts, medical and
dietary sites there are to choose from, in an article entitled "How
to ease the pain" The Sunday Times magazine,
Culture, published a list of just five websites it
considered reliable and informative.This site was one of that five.

CONDITIONS
AND DISEASES PREVENTED AND HELPED BY A LOW-CARB, HIGH-FAT DIET

"NH&WL may be the best non-technical book on diet ever
written"
Joel Kauffman, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of the Sciences,
Philadelphia, PA

UK Food Standards Agency shows its ignorance

"Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Part One: Introduction

In February 2009, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA)
launched a concerted campaign to get us all to reduce the amount of
saturated fat — by which they mean animal fats and tropical oils
– in our diets.

But not only the message, but also they way they delivered it,
showed their total ignorance of the science and evidence published over
the last decades. This shows that, in fact, it is not natural saturated
fats that are the problem, it is the unnatural processed
polyunsaturated vegetable cooking oils and margarines.

Ridiculous, misleading propaganda

For example, the BBC showed 'saturated fat' being taken from the
fridge and then poured down the sink drain. Then the U-bend was
dismantled to show how the fat had clogged it. This, they said, was
what happened in your arteries.

It was complete rubbish, and completely untrue!

Firstly, saturated fat would be solid in a fridge; there is no way
you could pour it down a drain straight from the fridge. Secondly, a
sink drain is entirely different from an artery, both in form and
temperature. Thirdly, there is no way that such fat could get into an
artery to clog it (Are the FSA unaware of the fact that most people
don't inject fats into their arteries? Have they forgotten the
digestive process?).

Have they no basic knowledge of biochemistry? Don't they read medical and nutritional
journals? Surely, if they did, they would know that the major fats
found in atheromatous plaques is not saturated fats, but
POLYUNsaturated fats.

A study published in Lancet — so it isn't hard to find — compared the fatty-acid composition of aortic plaques with that of
post-mortem serum and adipose tissue. They found positive associations
"between serum [in the bloodstream] and plaque [the stuff which blocks
arteries] omega 6 [VEGETABLE oil] (r = 0.75) and omega 3 (r = 0.93)
polyunsaturated fatty acids, and monounsaturates (r = 0.70)... No
associations were found with saturated fatty acids."[1]

Just in case you missed the last sentence, it read:

"No associations were found with saturated fatty acids"

If it still isn't clear: Arteries block with polyunsaturated fatty
acids, NOT saturated fats.

Fat facts

As a species, we have eaten animal fats and tropical oils, all of
which contain a significant amount of saturated fatty acids, for the
whole of our existence as a species on this planet. Until the 20th century, before which time
coronary heart disease (CHD) was either unknown or at least extremely
rare, such fats were the only ones we did eat. With that background,
why should we change?

We also know that animals, whether they are plant eaters or carnivores, which eat their natural diets, as well as humans who are untainted by our civilised dietary ideas, ALL MAMMALS eat high-fat, high-saturated fat diets, and DON'T get the diseases we do, where is the evidence that we shouldn't also eat their healthy diet?

The reason we are told to restrict our total fat intake to about 35%
of calorie intake is because it is assumed that eating fat makes us
fat, and that being fat predisposes us to diseases such as diabetes,
heart disease and cancer.

The reason for the specific warning against saturated fats is the
belief that saturated fats increase the risk of heart disease. Animal
fats are sought out particularly for damnation as they not only contain
some saturated fatty acids but cholesterol as well — so they must
be doubly bad. Polyunsaturated oils, on the other hand, tend to lower
our blood cholesterol levels, so they must be healthier. We saw earlier
that there is precious little evidence to support these assertions;
nevertheless, these are the sole bases for the recommendations.

Fats are important constituents in our diets for many reasons. With
the highest amount of calories of any food, they are an important
energy source. Our bodies need energy all the time. The amount of
energy coming from carbohydrates is stored in our bodies in the form of
glucose and glycogen, but that store is very limited: enough for
perhaps two days if we take it easy. Our bodies’ major energy
store is body fat — a ‘saturated animal fat’, by the
way.

But fats are much more than just an energy reserve. Our brains are
mostly composed of fats; and fats are building blocks for body cell
membranes and a wide range of hormones and hormone-like substances;
fats also play an important part in cushioning vital organs.

Fats are also essential if our bodies are to use the fat-soluble
vitamins A, D, E and K; they are essential for the conversion of
carotene from plant foods to vitamin A.2 Butter is the best
source of these important nutrients, and vitamin A is more easily
absorbed and utilized from butter than from any other
source.3 In fact our bodies have great difficulty with the
carotene in plants. Our digestive system is not well equipped to
convert carotene to vitamin A. Only about one-sixth of the carotene you
eat may be converted, and only about one-third of that sixth is
actually absorbed into the body. Much of the blindness in developing
countries, which is blamed on a lack of vitamin A, is actually due to a
lack of fat in the diet, so that what vitamin A there is cannot be
metabolized. In an attempt to stop the blindness, rice is genetically
modified so that it contains more carotene — but as it
doesn’t contain fat, what’s the point?

Fats are also needed for mineral absorption.

As well as having a wide range of important functions within our
bodies, eating fat with any meal slows down the rate at which food is
absorbed so that we feel fuller more quickly and can go much longer
without feeling hungry. And it is well nigh impossible to eat too much
fat.

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Disclaimer: Second Opinions is the website of Barry Groves PhD, offering online nutritional facts and online nutritional information. This website should be used to support rather than replace medical advice advocated by physicians.sitemap